Time Torn

by Ilse V Rensburg

  The thought is a slap in the face. All this time I have been groggy with the act of trying to decipher my own reality when Jesse is out there somewhere dying! I launch myself into a standing position and immediately topple over as my unsteady legs meet the swaying gravity of the pirate ship.

  Within a split second, the Captain grabs hold of me and politely assists me back to my seat on the golden beige chaise longue that stands innocently before the wood-panelled walls of the cabin.

  “Ye need ta be calm wee one. It was only ye we found. If I had spotted another I would ‘ave offered aid. We ain’t like some of the other pirates out there.”

  Back on my familiar seat, I wiggle my toes in an attempt to wake my legs. The sudden burst of energy and adrenalin has left me depleted. I rub at my eyes. I am overwhelmed. This new reality is just starting to sink in and I have no idea how to deal with it. Should I freak out? Start screaming? Or be calm and logical? I am torn.

  “Have you found out where we are?” I ask with a sinking heart. I know I won’t find Jesse, not when a giant burly blonde pirate has taken it upon himself to oversee my health. On a side note, I know I am far from home so the least I can do is find out exactly where, ‘here,’ is.

  “Gus found a sign that read, ‘La Rochelle, France.’ We ain’t sure where that is. I checked me map and it ain’t on there.”

  Shapes flicker across my eyes and my head feels hollow as I slowly repeat, “France?” I shake my head. “And you say I fell from the sky?”

  The Captain responds with a slow nod as he places his pipe down on a French colonial looking desk behind him.

  I begin to mumble to myself as a sudden thought strikes, “The light...”

  All of this: the pirate, France and my semi-resurrection, it all relates to the white light. The Captain had seen it too, just before his ship was transported here, to what would seem like a parallel dimension to him and his crew, and yet it is home to me.

  I might have chatted my way through Science this last year but that didn't mean I hadn’t paid attention. During the first term, Mrs Ducie had explained to the class of the impossibility of time travel and the hypothesis for it to happen.

  My assumption was that either I had travelled back in time or the white light had transported me as well as the pirates to France. So had the pirates travelled forward in time? The Captain swore that he had no idea where France was. My history of pirate lore was foggy but pirates had to have been around in early French history, otherwise, none of the, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movies would make sense! Why would the British be wearing those white wigs? Wasn’t that a French thing? Groaning I lean so that my back rests against the smooth fabric of the chaise longue.

  “Aye, as I told ye, lass, Gus spotted ye falling from yon sky. And what a sky – I’m still expecting to see a group of Valkyrie picking their choice of the dead. And by the way, ye gave Gus one heck of a fright I tell ye.”

  He pauses to reward me with a grave stare as though I had intentionally scared the living daylights out of poor, little Gus.

  “I thought ye were a bird ta be honest. Lucky Gus was there, uh?” He says with a wink.

  Rubbing at my forehead I reply, “Why is this happening? There’s no logical explanation!” I complain. “Wait... We both saw the bright light and then earlier you said something about a mushroom?” I ask, slowly as an equally illogical and unproven theory begins to form like a shattered light amidst my murky thoughts.

  The Captain responds with a curious, “Aye.”

  “It’s the bombs. They did this.”

  I want to stand up and pace the room. It would help me focus my thoughts but I'm not sure if I can trust my legs to stay steady, and on top of it all my forehead has begun to throb with the dawning of a migraine which only make my tired eyes long for a moment to rest.

  With a frown the Captain stands, turning towards the old-fashioned desk that rests in front of the circular window. It is covered in scrolls and bits of parchment. The room is silent apart from the sounds of ruffling as he searches through the chaos of papers.

  Eventually, he pulls a large scroll from the pile. The parchment is yellowed and curled together from being rolled up for so long.

  “I suspect you’re going to start talking about them nuclear things again ain’t ye? Before ye rattle my brain with new information why don’t ye first show me where yer from on me map, lass?” He queries, holding up the yellow roll as he does.

  Before I can answer him, he is flattening the map out on the worn-out floor in front of where I am seated. It is beautiful. The delicate geography is hand drawn and painted with a medium that looks like watercolours. It reminds me of a diagram a writer might draw to explain their fantasy world because that is what it is, a fantasy landscape with countries and islands nothing like the ones I am familiar with.

  The Captain taps his index finger in the centre on the parchment, proceeding to stare intently at it. Curiously I move forward. He taps the map again with a grunt.

  “Blasted thing is frozen,” he complains.

  “Frozen?” I ask, extending my arm and tracing a large calligraphic word on one of the islands with my pointing finger.

  “It’s supposed ta move, show ye where ye are.”

  “Maybe it’s not working because you aren’t on this version of Earth?”

  The Captain shrugs. “Nah, the magic must have run out is all. Show me where ye from, lass.”

  I return my focus to the map, studying the shapes that look similar to the continents I know but with strange names like Ereb Antar. “What language is this?”

  “Ah, all me maps are in different dialects lass. Greek, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hieroglyphics, Persian, but this one is Latin.”

  Sucking in my bottom lip. I study the map and the swirling letters that make up the ancient Latin words. I should have realized it was Latin. It is one of the oldest languages known to man. “This map is quite different to what you would find in an Atlas around here.” I close my eyes, picturing the elephant ear-like shape of Africa. After a moment I open them and stare at the map in front of me. “If I had to guess I’d say that I’m from here.” I point to a small cluster of Islands in the south that rest underneath a large and strangely shaped continent called Aphasia Asu.

  The Captain grimaces. “Ah, nah, lass. We ‘ave heard many a strange thing about yon islands...”

  My neck strains as I bend over my knees, my chin balancing just above one of my kneecaps. To ease the ache I sit up, my head spinning as I am immediately overwhelmed with fatigue. “But if what you’re saying is true then those islands won’t be there anymore,” I say, my eyes closed.

  I open them to see the Captain is staring at me. His forehead wrinkled as if he is contemplating something. “Ye would be surprised as to what is where nowadays lass. I always wondered what a world like yours would be like, but now I’m here I’m not too sure I like it. Ye don’t believe in potions. It already seems tedious, how do ye heal yourselves? Ye ‘ave bizarre boxes caging people inside ‘em for entertainment and wee tubes of light with no fire in ‘em. I should have listened ta the hag. She warned that the veil had been torn and nothing good would come of it.”

  “The veil?” I ask, my eyelids beginning to droop.

  “Never ye mind lass. It’s time ye rested.” He responds, rolling the map up and placing it back on his desk.

  Tired of fighting my eyelids I allow us both a moment of peace and let them close. Immediately a flash of bright light and an oily black hole swirl behind them. My lids shoot open as a heightened awareness takes over me.

  “A wormhole! The bombs! That much nuclear energy could definitely have created one!” I exclaim.

  The Captain pauses mid-stride. He must have been making his way towards me. “What do ye mean, lass?”

  Curling my legs underneath me I reply, “The mushroom cloud you saw on TV! It was a nuclear bomb.”

  Confusion mars his features. “A what?”

  “The box, it’s called a televisio
n set and the people inside aren’t trapped. There’s nothing in the box, it’s run by electricity. Those balls of light are called light bulbs and they are also run by electricity. I think the reason all of this is a happening is because of the nuclear bombs they set off before I die... Before you rescued me. I bet you all that nuclear energy could rip a hole in time, or the veil, whatever you want to call it.”

  The Captain cringes. “I don’t like the sound of this electricity witchcraft.”

  “It’s not witchcraft, its science,” I reply.

  “What’s science ay? I’ll show this science,” he growls.

  I groan in annoyance. “Never mind about science, okay, forget science! We just need to figure out what we are going to do next. If a wormhole has been created and things like pirates that aren’t meant to exist actually do then we are in for a world of trouble.”

  “Stop saying we don’t exist all right! Because I’m here and I’m real, more real than science I can tell ye!”

  I want to laugh but my body is stiff and exhausted. I stifle a yawn and lean my head back on the soft cushion of the chaise longue. “Of course, you’re real.”

  My mind is buzzing and I am pretty certain that when I wake up I will either be dead, for real or back on the side of the pavement having hallucinated all this.

  “Ah, lass. Ye an interesting one ain’t ye. Come on, rest up.” He moves forwards, his burly figure bending over me. I can no longer keep my eyes open. I nod as he lifts me into his large arms and carries me out of the cabin.

  I mumble into his shoulder as he walks, “It’s just a superstition you know? There’s no such thing as bad luck to have a female on board a ship. In my world, they sail on all the ships and nothing bad happens. Except for the Titanic, and that was just bad mechanics and an incident with an iceberg or something.”

  “Aah, lass, ye and ye funny friends. Mechanics. I tell ye what, ma ship, Quinlin, would show any other vessel in this land.”

  His last sentence is hazy as I slip into a deep sleep, sure that when I wake up this will all be a day lost in the vacuum of time.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Finn jolts to the side of the washed-out Persian carpet that stretches across the familiar room.

  Its walls grey stone blocks. He wants to be as far from the girl who stands beside him as possible. Her long purple hair is tied in a braid that hangs over her right shoulder, covering the plethora of tattoos that slumber there.

  He can feel the hairs on his biceps rising in revulsion, he can’t stand to look down and glimpse anymore of her grotesque ink. He is currently overcome with one particular image of a wildebeest’s skull seeping blood from its eyes. It brings with it flashbacks of what had transpired only hours earlier when he’d had the unfortunate opportunity to witness a Minotaur in the flesh.

  He lets out a breath and watches as it turns to smog in the cold room. He hates this room and he hates all the people in it. From Dawn Miller, whose unjustified fear he can taste in the back of his throat like a ball of phlegm, to the two bodyguards who stand motionless beside the large carved double door that is the only way in or out of Dr Terracio’s dungeon-like office.

  He had first met Dawn and Terracio in this room, and back then he had thought it a dream come true. Terracio had hired him. The guy had actually paid him to use his visions. A gift not many believed in and even less would pay to experience.

  And now that he is back inside the room, surrounded by a flickering yellow light from thin white candles melting inside iron cages that cling to the stone walls, Finn can no longer say that the job bestowed upon him is still a dream. In fact, looking down at his ripped clothes covered in the flaking dark brown flecks of dried blood and white ash, he honestly believes that he has entered a living nightmare.

  And it isn’t just because the white ash had previously been two teenagers he'd envisioned as part of a prophecy, or that Dawn had slapped him with inhuman strength which immediately knocked him to the ground and left him with a split lip and a large indigo bruise above his mouth. It's that even after that ordeal, he'd experienced another.

  He'd been told if he tried to escape from the job Terracio had given him he would be murdered and then he had been forced to come back to the room where it had all begun, to face not only one madman but an entire school of his followers!

  A low groan echoes around them followed by wood scraping against stone. The noise cuts Finn’s musings short. Looking over to the egress of the room he watches as Terracio’s bodyguards pull the bulky door open, the veins in their arms swelling with each tug. He is suddenly nauseous, and it really does not help that Dawn appears to be awaiting her own demise, literally. She stands beside him mumbling some weird poem under her breath. The poem has him thinking of Mexican Skulls and black candles with seeping wax closely resembling blood or garnets in the firelight.

  Terracio’s shadow steps into the room before he does, abnormally long and twisted compared to the oddly short man it is attached too, and who possesses the uncanny ability to tower over all who are taller than him. He steps so that he stands before Finn and Dawn, his old, acne-scarred face unreadable.

  “Dawn.” His chin is stern as it tilts in her direction and then towards Finn. “You failed. Dawn is aware of the consequences of failure, but you, Finn, are not. I don’t have the time to inform you of what that entails and that is because of the mess you have created. I need to do damage control. I need to ascertain a new plan.”

  Finn can actually feel time slow as Dawn stops breathing beside him. Terracio places his hands behind his back, his eyes losing pounds as he continues, “I’d like to rid myself of both of you, to see you disposed of good and proper... but I’ve decided against it.”

  The room starts up again, similar to a carousel without the haunting music. Finn feels Dawns tiny, inaudible sigh of relief tap against his neck. He shivers. How had she gotten so close to him again? He sneaks a glance at her and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Dawn has unusual eyes. Her pupils are diamond shaped like a cat or a snakes, but her irides are a vivid olive green and right now her pupils are contracting and expanding with each flicker of the candlelight.

  He steps to the side, immediately calming as the feeling of her closeness evaporates. He is rattled. He is dirty and tired and now he is confused, but he won't allow himself to be scared. There has to be a logical explanation for everything that has happened. That is who Finn is, his gift is illogical and absurd and so he balances it with his attempts at studying a degree in engineering.

  He feels his shoulders bunch in agitation. Is Terracio threatening to kill them? For failing to kill Dawn’s cousin?

  Before he can begin to figure out an answer to those two questions Terracio’s deep voice resonates around the fortress-like room. “You removed one of my students from the institute without consulting me or retrieving my permission to do so. You endangered her.” His glare finds Finn. His right eye grossly enlarged by his glass monocle.

  Anger flares in Finn’s chest. So what? Now he's a caring headmaster? There is something wrong with Terracio and his students and it has nothing to do with their unusual abilities and more to do with a suffocating feeling that seems to wrap around Finn’s throat whenever he is a visitor inside the institution. The whole setup screams towards the makings of a cult.

  He swallows slowly, recalling the Minotaur and how it had torn through the streets of a suburban Johannesburg neighbourhood, ripping heads and limbs from bodies with an axe and crushing them with its fists. He had tried to help. The blood that still stains his grey V-neck shirt and black jeans is not his own. It is the blood of the departed.

  Dawn had pulled him from the innocents he was attempting to save so that she could collect Michael Valentine’s spirit paintings, the paintings that told the prophecy of the world's end.

  A vision had broken through as he was yanked from their screams. The vision enlightened him to how very evil Terracio is. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time because it wasn’t a vision of t
he future, more of a snippet of what could have been. Terracio wanted to destroy the world, he had wanted the bombs and he wanted a new order, one where he and his strange students were in charge.

  Terracio moves to sit behind his massive monastery-like desk. “I now ponder whether my command to not have you two disposed of was indeed the correct decision,” he says staring down at a neat stack of papers that lie on the bureau’s surface before him.

  Dawn coughs into the side of her closed fist. She stuffs her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and slinks forwards. The carpet slides slightly with the movement, forcing Finn to step back so he doesn't lose his balance.

  “Sir...” Dawn whispers, her voice shaky and rough.

  Terracio places his palms together before him as if he is about to utter a prayer, instead, he leans his chin against the tips of his fingers, his eyes studying their rumpled appearances and the day-old clothes they still wear.

  Finn is certain that he is contemplating what transpired in South Africa because, despite the institute having a ban on all television and newspapers, Terracio knows everything down to the nittiest grittiest detail. Dawn and Finn are not his only spies.

  “Yes, Dawn?”

  Her voice cracks as she answers, “what exactly do you mean by disposed of?”

  Terracio taps his fingers against the deep stain of the wood that makes up his desk. Finn watches as annoyance flits across his face. His eyebrows meeting to give him the uncanny appearance of only the top half of his face scowling.

  “You disappoint me, Dawn.”

  “I’m sorry sir.” She looks down at her boots dusted with ash, the soles crusted with dried soil.

  Terracio lifts his hand, his thumb picking at the long nail of his middle finger as he replies, “I shall admit that you have done me a favour Dawn, and for your loyalty and quick thinking I will spare you the punishment you truly deserve. Instead, since it is obvious that you are slipping... I require you to re-join solitary for as long as I deem necessary. You understand that I cannot have you assisting me if you cannot even control your own emotions.”